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But from amidst these grounds for congratulation there 
looms out, but too distinctly, a fact of an opposite kind — a 
fact which does not affect us alone, but the responsibility for 
which is shared, I fear, by the entire nation. I would not 
for a moment be deemed capable of unduly depreciating the 
systematic study of the animal and vegetable kingdoms, to 
which as Englishmen we are so addicted. On the con- 
trary, I know too well that such studies are essential to us ; 
they constitute the indispensable foundations upon which 
those who aim at erecting loftier edifices must build. But 
whilst making this admission in the most unreserved manner, 
I cannot hide from myself, or from you, the fact that there 
are yet higher subjects of thought and research than those 
involved in the discrimination of genera and species, or in 
the study of the systematic positions which objects should 
occupy in the human classifications. It is eminently charac- 
teristic of the present age that men have become alive to this 
truth ; hence we find them in various parts of the world 
grappling with the loftiest of problems. The sneers with 
which “Peter Pindar” saluted Sir Joseph Banks for impaling 
butterflies and boiling fleas are no longer possible. Goethe, 
Oken, and Owen have stimulated us to the study of animal 
and vegetable homologies ; Darwin has removed many of 
the difficulties that beset the Lamarckian ideas respecting 
the origin of species ; by sending us along what I believe to 
be the right track he has opened the way to new lines of 
enquiry so vast as to demand the greatest of intellects to 
trace their ultimate ramifications and to reach the grand 
generalisations towards which they will finally conduct us. 
Then there is the wide field of detailed physiological research, 
in which so much has already been done, but so much of 
which is yet uncultivated. We are surrounded one very hand 
by myriads of plants and animals of whose life-history we 
know little, but which invite our study. To this end we 
must make the microscope our primary instrument, with the 
